Portfolio

The ePortfolio is a critical component of your Educational Leadership and Management EdD program, serving both self-assessment and program assessment purposes. Your ePortfolio is an organized, selective collection of artifacts, documents, self-reflections, and scholarly work that provides a comprehensive record of your experiences and progress toward your academic and professional leadership and management goals. The development of your ePortfolio is an ongoing process that will ultimately allow you to demonstrate your mastery of each of the specialization’s program outcomes. The final version of your ePortfolio will be submitted in EDD8114 Educational Leadership and Management Capstone.

The ePortfolio is a learning portfolio. It is a “representative, purposeful and selective collection of one’s work drawn primarily from classroom work…It documents…evidence of learning, growth, and change—in essence a learning history is captured” (Arter, 1995). Hence, the required contents of the ePortfolio provide for the demonstration of learning and growth. The first part of the ePortfolio, Section One: Personal and Professional Experience, contains information and documents such as an audio/visual introduction, reflections about your past and current activities related to leadership and management, a description of significant professional products, a narrative describing your professional and academic goals, your most current resume or curriculum vitae, and your Capella transcript.

The second part of the ePortfolio, Section Two: Documentation of Program Outcomes, is comprised of artifacts and artifact descriptions, self-assessments, and a narrative paper. The narrative paper is a scholarly-level analytical reflection of the artifacts that you have chosen in order to demonstrate mastery of each program outcome. In addition, the paper addresses your journey from novice to expert, as well as your academic and professional growth in the program.

Opportunities to develop and refine your ePortfolio begin in EDD8100 and continue through EDD8114. You will be able to save artifacts to your ePortfolio, draft descriptions of the artifacts, and work on your narrative paper throughout the coursework phase of the EdD. Within the context of your coursework, you will engage in three distinct guided cycles of self-reflection in preparation for your final ePortfolio review:  at the beginning of the program, mid-point in the program, and in the capstone course. These guided opportunities for self-reflection will occur in EDD8100, EDD8106, and EDD8114.

The final ePortfolio submission in EDD8114 is a summative assessment and serves as a demonstration of your achievement of the program outcomes and successful completion of Phase I of the EdD program. The successful review of your portfolio assures your access to the Phase II portion of your program, the dissertation phase.

ePortfolios are widely accepted as a way to assess competence. As the culminating assessment in Phase I of the Educational Leadership and Management EdD program, the ePortfolio will be of value to you in at least three important ways:

1. The ePortfolio provides a way to reflect upon and synthesize your EdD experiences. You begin building your ePortfolio in EDD8100 and add to it throughout the program. The ePortfolio is organized around the six specialization outcomes and provides evidence of mastery of each outcome.
2. The ePortfolio adds strength and credibility to your professional resume by documenting your accomplishments in the program. That is, you will finish the program with more than a transcript of courses. Your ePortfolio will be a document that demonstrates what you have learned and can do.
3. Finally, in today's standards-based P-12 and higher educational environment, the development of a professional ePortfolio is becoming a routine but important part of educational leadership professional development planning.

The EdD ePortfolio will be a lasting record of your learning and growth throughout your EdD program, and an important supplement to your diploma and transcript in the future.

Reference:

Arter, J (1995). Portfolios for assessment and instruction. ERIC Digest. ERIC Clearing House. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed388890.html